Warriors land Steve Kerr; Kerr lands big expectations

Give Joe Lacob and the Warriors full credit for getting their man, the guy they had targeted from the start.

And give Kerr credit for stepping into arguably the most high pressure coaching situation since Pat Riley took over the Lakers in 1981.

Kerr, who has never coached a day in his life – except perhaps his kids’ CYO teams – has no time to learn on the job. He will plunge into a job with a team that’s ready to win right now.

A team where the expectations are that he will win at least 52 games (bettering Mark Jackson’s record this year) and will get his team farther than Jackson ever did in the playoffs.

Which is the Western Conference finals. No backsliding allowed.

It’s a tall order, but it is clear that anyone who joins the Warriors right now has to think very big. Very tall. Just the fact that we’re considering that the Warriors job is now a high-pressure position shows how much things have changed.

The Warriors just beat out the Knicks for a coach. Let that sink in for a moment, long time Warriors fans.

Lacob gets what he wants – well, except for a waterfront arena in San Francisco. But, other than that, he has proven that he will not be denied.

And that was the case with Kerr, who had plenty of leverage and was given the hard sell by the Warriors. The front office team – after having talks fail with Stan Van Gundy on Monday – went to Oklahoma City to woo Kerr where he was calling the game on Tuesday.

The hard sell included a five-year $25 million contract and the chance to coach Stephen Curry. Added bonuses to the Warriors job: the ability to remain in California, to be close to his daughter Maddy who plays volleyball at Cal and to hang around his former Arizona teammate KNBR’s Tom Tolbert.

All of that added up to a deal that was more attractive than coaching the woeful Knicks and dealing with New York, even if it meant skipping the chance to work for his mentor Phil Jackson.

The hire was a huge coup for the Warriors, surprising the entire league and avoiding what was beginning to look like a typical Warriors’ belly flop. Lacob described himself to one reporter from Yahoo as “ecstatic,” and he should be. If Kerr had turned him down, it would have been the third big loss Lacob had been dealt in a month: Clippers in Game 7, waterfront arena, top two coaching choices. Instead of looking lost like the 49ers did when they fired Steve Mariucci years ago, the Warriors got the guy they wanted.

Proving that these aren’t the old Warriors. This is no longer the team that will find a way to fail.

We don’t know how Kerr will perform as a coach, just as we didn’t know how Mark Jackson would be when he was hired out of the broadcast booth three years ago.

What we do know is that Kerr has an impeccable pedigree, having won five championship rings while playing for two of the greatest coaches in NBA history: Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich. We can presume that, as a former general manger himself in Phoenix, he will be successful in navigating the personalities and ego struggles of the Warriors very crowded front office, something Mark Jackson refused to do. He is close to president Rick Welts and knows both Lacob and his son Kirk well. Though no details have been disclosed, we can also assume that Kerr has agreed to have a veteran strategist on his bench.

The biggest issue for the Warriors is making sure that their team is happy and responds to the new coach. The Warriors were praised throughout the NBA in the past two seasons for having rare chemistry on and off the floor. While much of that is attributable to the personalities on the team, a lot of the credit for that also goes to Mark Jackson.

But, knowing a little bit about Kerr’s personality and his diplomatic skills, he will do just fine in winning over the players. Kerr has played with some of the biggest personalities and egos in the game. For a time, he was Dennis Rodman’s babysitter on the Bulls. He knows how NBA locker rooms work, how to handle all the different characters and demeanors.

When the Warriors announced that they had fired Mark Jackson, general manager Bob Myers said he would not be announcing his announcement in two days. True to his word, he didn’t, but the Warrior announced their agreement in principle with Kerr after being without a coach for just eight days, which is pretty good.